The French fleet was nevertheless still struggling with such difficulties as to renew its supplies. The admiral was also strongly advised to seek, each time he will have extra troops and ships, a decisive fight. Through a letter sent on September 16th, Napoléon still commanded Villeneuve to leave his safe haven and to disembark at Naples (West coast of Italy) the troops he was carrying on his vessels and then, to return to Toulon. The English were then 30 to watch his anchorage. However, he missed this opportunity and, by September 3rd, it was already almost too late. With at his disposal 6 excellent Spanish ships anchored in Cartagena and adding to it even only the best of his, he still had an overwhelming numerical superiority. The strengthening of the English fleet that was monitoring this port did not push him to take action, even though it only had 4 ships on its arrival and 11 the next day. Once in Cádiz, Villeneuve focused exclusively on renewing supplies and repairing damage to his ships. As Emperor Napoleon wrote before even knowing for sure the decision taken by his admiral: Brave soldiers of the Boulogne camp! You will not go to England. On August 15, Villeneuve, who had left A Coruña the day before in the direction of Brest(Britanny, West of France), ended up turning back to go lock himself in Cadiz (South of Spain, on the Atlantic coast), where he arrived on the 20th. at the junction of the Channel and the North Sea) a sufficient numerical superiority. This trip was intended to deceive the English and to gather various French squadrons under a single command in order to have, at the crucial moment and on the chosen place (i.e. It had left Toulon (South France, on the Mediterranean shoreline) for a long cruise that took it back to Europe on the 27th of July, to Vigo and then to A Coruña (both spanish harbors) after a loop through the West Indies where it stayed from the May 15 to June 5. The military operations began on Mathrough the equipment of Pierre Charles Silvestre de Villeneuve’s fleet. Some 100,000 men, gathered on the shores of the North Sea, were ready to take the opportunity to cross the straits aboard a myriad of boats. It came at the end of a long sequence of complex manoeuvres, intended in theory to give temporarily control of the Dover Strait (which is the narrowest part of the English Channel, separating Great Britain from France) to the imperial fleet. The Battle of Trafalgar put a definitive end to French ambitions to bring war to the English land. British fleet : 446 killed, 1 246 injured.French and Spanish fleet : 3 243 killed, 2 538 injured, 8 000 prisoners.British fleet (27 ships) under Admiral Horatio Nelson.
French and Spanish fleet (33 ships) under Admiral Pierre Charles Silvestre de Villeneuve.October 21st, 1805 off the south-west coast of Spain, west of Cape Trafalgar.
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